


Ten percent

by Clevertyrant



Category: DAYS (Anime & Manga)
Genre: A bunch of insights my brain couldn't hold back, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, Kiichi sometimes can be a true forward, M/M, Manga Spoilers, Not literally, Short One Shot, and Kimishita gets his happy ending despite Yasuda based this character on a high-key emo soap dude, anyway, enjoy the ride, i can't believe i'm posting this, in every sense, more or less, no
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2019-01-09 12:03:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12276099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clevertyrant/pseuds/Clevertyrant
Summary: Always waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting eternally for that 10% in that world made of percentiles and strategies which margin of error must never stray too far from 90%





	Ten percent

The first time happened after the nationals, with the languor of victory beating in the chest like a time-release drug and a kind of euphoria one probably feels very few times in his life. When the awareness that everything he had staked until that very moment whistled along a gust of wind in the air - _the arbiter crossed his arms in that way that meant you’ve done it, lads._ _Now get your ass out of here and let me go home._

He hollered and howled and took off his shirt and threw it somewhere on the large expanse of green underfoot. For once nobody complained if two seconds after also his shorts were gone. Ah! He’d run half naked for all the perimeter of the pitch and in the end was buried alive in a tangle of arms and legs and sweat and laughs. It was nice. It felt nice.

And it had felt nice too, crossing gazes like crossing swords; casually, frantically— among a flesh-like mess of eyes and limbs, that gaze that had always been made of either searing wrath or cool detachment, that seldom or never had met his like that and that many times had stifled the ghost of mirth beneath layers and layers of pride and other things Kiichi couldn’t decipher. It had been a mistake, maybe, taking for granted that it was _for him_. But at that time he was more faulty than right and the thrill in his gut run faster than his thoughts, wild like his feet on the field--- and so did his hands, reaching out, grabbing and pulling, and seizing _his_ face and doing that thing that _could never be undone._

He’d kissed him.

Nothing like a casual brush, it had been a hungry lip-lock that felt so much more painfully starved from his side rather than the other. It ended soon, so soon that for a fraction he’d thought it never happened. But Kimishita confusion happened, fear flashed just for a breath in his cinereous eyes and whatever Kiichi had seen just a moment before thawing inside, was suddenly gone. Kimishita didn’t pull back nor pushed him away, just stared at him, a stare that silently implied a _what the fuck have you done?_

It occurred to Kiichi just later, much later; when he was sitting on the empty bleachers with his head in his hands and a weird feeling floating in his stomach, what he’d done. He had always been a thought-free person, putting too much weight on things he could just do because he wanted to do them was useless, since _he could do them_.

It was simple.

Mathematics.

It worked most of the times.

So he’d like to say he didn’t really get what he’d done wrong, although he maybe did. It was just wrong. Wrong like _you’ve been impolite to your upperclassmen_ or _your styled hair go against school regulations_. Stupid rules nobody gave a damn about.

Oh, but Kimishita did. Maybe didn’t care for rules, specifically, but appearance, for that he cared a lot. What others thought of him. Maybe Kiichi didn’t know him that well but certainly knew him more than most. And he’d spent years observing him closely or from afar, sometimes not getting shit, other times getting more than he wanted to get and without knowing what to make of all that information.

Why did he work so hard? For who? Why did he play the disciplined kid if at first glance… neither at second glance, to be honest, did he strike others as such? His necktie was never wrinkled, his grades never dropped, he always sat with his back straight and never once came late to school nor missed a lesson. Practicing over and over and over again, day and night. A perfect honor student. A perfect soccer player. Too perfect to be true. But still perfect, nonetheless. Even with his shitty quirks, his shitty wardrobe, his shitty personality, his shitty lineage, his shitty ideals, his shitty mug.

Always waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting eternally for that 10% in that world made of percentiles and strategies which margin of error must never stray too far from 90%...

And he wanted someone like him, who always gave his 10% expecting others to give their maximum, to understand it.

_I got it._

That’s why he started to think that maybe working hard for something wasn’t that bad. That if he gave his best, he’d make the best of himself too. In order to become _the best_. But if it was thanks to Kimishita that he now could give his best, did it mean that Kimishita was part of that best as well?

So, kissing him hadn’t been wrong. He didn’t break any rule, because in that moment… that was the best thing he could do. The best thing he would do. What he wanted to do.

“Everyone’s waiting for his _lordship_ to join the _soirée_. Y’know, the plebs’ hungry.”

Kiichi's head shot up from where it rested against his knees, under the tenuous light of one the lampposts surrounding the stalls, Kimishita stood in front of him. One foot leaning against a step, his frame just barely turned away and his sharp, slant eyes gazing at something indefinite at the center of the illuminated pitch.

The retort or a fat laugh followed by bullshit like how he was the king and it was just normal for others to wait for him, though, never came, so Kimishita eyed Kiichi hesitantly, his mouth slightly pursed. Seeing that the other was just looking at him blank-faced urged him to raise a brow. “What?” He enquired, frowning.

“Ten percent…” Kiichi said, his face lit up as though something just clicked in his head.

“Ha?” The irked crease between the midfielder’s brows deepened. “Listen, I’ve got no time for your… whatever it is, so cut the--”

“The kiss!” The shout that came after echoed everywhere as if they’d been in an amphitheatre, magnifying the message to at least forty or fifty yards away and while Kiichi got up pointing a finger at him, Kimishita just stood there, unmoving like marble and regarding him as spooked as a kid in front of a haunted house would’ve been. Sweat started to wet his brow, heat pricked up on his neck like a battalion of ferocious red ants.

Talk about a shock therapy.

“W-what the fuck are you yelling for, idiot?! Wanna die?!”

“Shut the fuck up and get it! Ten percent. That’s why you’re here, no?”

Kimishita leveled him a long stare, in which his eyes narrowed and narrowed and narrowed until snapped open wide, abruptly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He turned sharply on his heels, “I came just because the coach sent me to fetch your sorry ass. Now I delivered the message an’ I’m going back. Bye.”

“Coward.”

Kimishita stopped in his tracks, his back tensed up. “What did you just-”

“ _Coward_ ,” Kiichi repeated, putting more emphasis in the word. “You got it, ain’t you? That’s why you’re running away.”

“Life counseling ended when we won the nationals. You don’t need it anymore.” He wasn’t running away. He was just postponing something he didn’t wish to face now. It came all too soon. No, it shouldn’t have happened to begin with. Of all the things Kimishita imagined, that was the last one he had expected. And wasn’t sure how to cope with it. He had never thought that along the way, he’d take the wrong turn and fall into that ditch. Fall for him. He had no place, no space, for that feeling. So he didn’t place it somewhere. He let it linger though, yes, in the back of his mind - in silence - while at every step moved ahead it grew more and more and more like a weed. Kiichi, unwillingly, unknowingly, fed it. What a pain in the ass. He thought that feelings would weaken his mind, his focus, his priorities and they did. Everything, slowly, shifted dangerously toward a sole target. Faith became loyalty, admiration became passion, comradeship became…

“You do thou-”

“Don’t assume things!” Kimishita cut him off. No. The truth was that Kiichi wasn’t assuming anything, it was all true. _Need_. That word was the most frightening of them all. He needed too many things in his life, in the past, and all of them had turned out to be a debt or a promise. His father. His friends. The Captain. His teammates: they were all debtors. It meant working twice, thrice for repaying each and every of them. And a life wasn’t enough. If he capitulated now, if he gave in- it’d be like that all over again. Knowing himself, he’d live for that.

“I ain’t assuming.” Kiichi’s hand settling on his shoulder felt like a jab and a caress at the same time. Like his lips had felt a few hours before. Weird. Wrong. Hot. Comforting. Daunting. Perfect.

“So what do you want?” Kimishita couldn’t hold back that sigh, a sigh so relieved that was out of tune with the sharpness and resolve ringing in his query.

“No, that ain’t the right question. You should ask me _what you lack_.” Albeit he couldn’t see his face, Kimishita could tell there was no escape this time, he could exactly imagine what kind of expression Kiichi wore; like a deja-vù. Kimishita let his gaze wander on the pitch still sprinkled with confetti and erratic shoe print patterns. In the end, he let out a resigned exhale.

“Alright. What I lack?” Words stilled mid-air for a fraction, in which Kimishita stifled a grunt, squared his shoulders and waited, incredibly tensed for some reason he couldn’t grasp.

“I don’t know.” Kiichi shrugged.

“What was the point of the question, then?!” Kimishita turned sharply over his shoulder, his teeth gritted. However, the way Kiichi was looking at him now didn’t leave anything to the imagination anymore. It was nothing like the last time at the shrine, nor like a year before, a week, or day before. Or maybe was all just in his fucking head and Kiichi wasn’t really looking at him any differently. His face looked still like a punch ball. A punch ball _Kimishita_ had started to see under a different light.

“I thought it’d come automatically after you asked- ‘kay, hear me out.” The weight on Kimishita’s shoulder lifted and the palm slithered upon his neck, up until the cheek, where it stopped; nudging him to turn over completely.

“How ‘bout we start with tryin’... a thing?” Judging by the looks of it - the indecisiveness, how that guy's eyes pretended to stay trained on his but diverted just a bit sideways - how all the confidence Kiichi had had just up until that moment rapidly switched from Inohara-like iron grip to Tsukamoto-noodle-touch.

He was going to kiss him, _again_.

Kimishita bit the inside of his cheek, preventing the right corner of his mouth from curling up and inched forward, enough to casually climb on the step above that occupied by Kiichi.

“Go ahead.” He let out at last, feigning total callousness.

Kiichi was dense, but a stupid he was not. _Not that much_. He frowned when Kimishita clearly showed that he’d understood where he was getting at. However he couldn’t hold back a smile as his head lifted, mouth brushing against Kimishita’s lips.

“Gimme your ten percent an’ I’ll show you how to get an immediate thousand percent score. No waiting.”

“Guaranteed?”

“You tell me.” The second time they kissed, Kimishita discovered that shutting his brain for a while, being reckless and greedy wasn’t that bad. And he didn’t owe a thing to anybody, this time.

He was just getting his payback.

**Author's Note:**

> Ah, of course I took for granted that Seiseki wins the nationals. If they lose consider this thing a 'what if.'


End file.
